


Instinct

by honeycomb95



Series: Sylvix Week 2019 [2]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Blue Lions Route, Drabble, Felix is softer, Freeform, I mean so are Glenn and Miklan, M/M, Marianne is mentioned too, Most of the BL students are mentioned, Soulmates, Sylvain has feelings too y'know, Sylvix Week (Fire Emblem), Sylvix Week 2019, who knew shared trauma could be so romantic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-31 01:35:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21036374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeycomb95/pseuds/honeycomb95
Summary: Connecting with someone emotionally on the most basic and intimate of levels is not something one experiences often in life, and although Sylvain isn't sure exactly when or how he knows it, he knows that he's feeling it now.Written for Sylvix week. Day 2: Coffee Shop AU /Soulmates/ Dreams





	Instinct

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not entirely sure how I managed to turn a soulmates prompt into an introspective Sylvain character study turned battle prose but here we are.

The sensation of connecting with someone emotionally on the most basic and intimate of levels is not something one experiences often in life. When your very soul touches another it's primal and instinctive, with no effort and no forethought required. It goes farther than falling in love, it runs deeper than familial bonds and Sylvain isn't sure when or how he knows it, but he knows that he's feeling it now.

He felt it when he was six: when he'd risked losing frostbitten fingers to the midwinter snow, drawing shapes in the frozen drift just to distract a crying Felix who's red and puffy eyes watched him like a hawk as he shivered in his oversized coat. He'd felt it again later that same year when Miklan, in a terrible fit of rage, had struck him in the face with a rock - the other kids were so impressed that he'd really managed to lose his first tooth! – while Felix was the only one who was more concerned about his bleeding lip instead. It was there in the background during his first taste of real panic: a game of hide and seek that had gone terribly wrong when they accidentally lost each other in the fading daylight of the back woods behind the Gautier mansion. Felix had been a sobbing mess by the time Sylvain had found him: his face snotty and red, hands and knees scraped raw from falling onto the permafrost of an iced over gully. They promised on that day that they'd always stay together, that they'd even die together.

He felt it in there (somewhere) in the latter half of fourteen, when he'd taken to distracting himself from his own existence with any pretty face who looked at him twice and some who'd barely looked at him once. When the results of his late night self-sabotage began to appear as deep scratches on his back, they mirrored with an unsettling clarity the anxiety that clawed at him slowly from inside of his lungs. When the long, repeated lectures from an exasperated Ingrid and Dimitri did nothing to temper his flirting but the sting of Felix's silence roared in his ears like a monster.

It was there in force when he was sixteen, when The Tragedy of Duscur had destroyed Felix without laying a single finger on him and Sylvain realized he would have given up the very breath in his lungs if it meant that Felix could be spared from the pain. It was there in the long, fractured, sleepless nights spent camping out in Felix's room at the Fraldarius estate; watching the candlelight flicker in silence until the flame burned the wick down to sputter out at the quick. It was there still in the dead of night, when Felix would bolt upright between restless fits of broken sleep with a startling alertness just to scream for his brother not to leave him. When the devastating realization had hit them both that dreams of lost loved ones will always become nightmares upon wake. It was there in the aftermath: in the way Felix's fists beat weakly against Sylvain's chest as he silently held him close, in the harsh words spoken in raw grief, in the way Felix's mouth screamed at him to _“fuck off”_ but his eyes pleaded _“please, don't you leave me too”_.

When he's twenty he starts to understand. When he's standing on the top floor of Conand Tower staring down the shaft of his lance at his shithead older brother, he discovers that running his own blood through feels less like a betrayal and more like cleaning up a mess that he didn't even make. When people look at him afterwards with such stupid, infuriating, well intended _pity_ it feels like shards of ice dragging through his veins, always needling at him with their stupid questions like: _“are you okay?”_ and _“do you need to talk?”_. The only one who understood that he didn't need to talk - that all he needed was to _not_ talk - was Felix. He just seemed to know when sitting with him in a silence that would usually deafen Sylvain was the only thing he could stomach without screaming.

When he's twenty-five he's come to terms with it, mostly. He's learned that the bitterness of war is less like the valiant, heroic tales of Loog and Kyphon and more like his friends and foes alike hitting the ground in front of him like flies in the Faerghus frost. When generals he's known for years and foot soldiers he's known for minutes lie together sprawled at broken angles in the mud, he finds himself morbidly reflecting that rank and station truly do mean nothing in the end if fate's cruel whims have decided you're to wind up crushed and nameless under the thrum of the cavalry's hooves. When the unearthly screams of half-dead soldiers pull him out of his stupor, all Sylvain can think of as he tears his lance from an Imperial shoulder with an ungodly _squelch_ is that he has to make it back. He's known for years that he fights like a madman with a death wish, but even he still wants to see this war through. So long as his heart beats and his lungs draw breath the only thing keeping him tethered to the reality of the battlefield is the familiar flash of Felix's sword to his left – lightning quick and deadly; familiar and safe.

He's still twenty-five when it happens. When an arrow that narrowly misses his right flank finds a mark anyway with a wet _thud_. He can't spot the archer that fired it and he has no idea if it was even meant for him or not, but none of that matters when he hears the familiar hiss from behind him and the rumble of the battlefield peters to a standstill. He doesn't remember dismounting from his horse, he doesn't really remember raising his shield to narrowly block the sniped Fimbulvetr that almost takes his arm, either. What he does remember are the basics of his Faith training, the healing magic that the Professor had insisted in teaching all casting-capable soldiers for use in the field as a make-shift medic. He doesn't feel the impact in his knees as he drops to the ground beside Felix, who's jaw clamps in pain as he tries unsuccessfully to remove the arrow lodged just below his shoulder on his own. _“Venin,”_ he says through gritted teeth as the veins along his upper arm begin to tint purple at an alarming speed.

Sylvain starts to panic, the sensation alien and wholly unwelcome as he runs through his options in his head. Complex poisons were far outside of his area of expertise and as he quickly scans the battlefield neither Mercedes nor Marianne were around. How on earth was he meant to fix this all on his own? His hands trembled as he lifted them, they're still shaking when the warm white healing glow begins to radiate from his calloused fingertips. His shaking only truly stops when Felix's quiet, calm demeanor breaks when he fails to stifle his pained grunt from ripping the offending arrow from his skin.

“_No, not happening”_ Sylvain whispers as instinct kicks in and he plants his Hexlock shield firmly into the ground behind him, covering them both from the worst of the battle's fallout as his hands get to work on Felix's shoulder. An eternity passes in a heartbeat and whether it was the roar of his blood pulsing through his ears or whether he was deafened by his unwitting low chants of _“not you, not you, not you” _, he doesn't hear Mercie approach. Neither does he register her soft voice telling him the battle is over, and when her tiny, gentle hand rests on his shoulder he almost breaks her in two in his desperation to defend, to _protect._

He refuses all offers of help in carrying Felix to the medical tent. He knows that he's being unreasonable and ridiculous but with Felix's lithe frame limp in his arms and his face pale and twisted in a painful grimace, something inside of Sylvain had snapped past the point of caring who thinks what anymore. He refuses to leave his side as Mercie administers an antitoxin and to his relief Marianne seems to understand that as she quietly attends to a nasty frostburn on his forearm he doesn't remember getting.

He feels it now, when Felix wakes up equal parts groggy and grumpy in the low light of the early morning, when his hazy amber eyes finally manage to focus on Sylvain's own and he breathes out a sigh of relief he wasn't aware he was holding. He feels it when his arm seizes in place as he tries to reach out a battered hand, when it doesn't even matter because as always Felix meets him halfway. He's _always_ met him halfway. Never imposing and never demanding, just simply _being_ by his side in the most natural and perfect balance. He feels it now, when whatever idiot words he tries to say get caught in his throat, when Felix just shakes his head with a smile that's lopsided and vulnerable and only for him.

He feels him in his very soul: his perfect match, his other half, his pair.

**Author's Note:**

> whoo is it hot in here or is it just me devouring the crushing despair as i break my own heart


End file.
